I have been reading on the net (abcnews.com one in particular) and I have been reading HORROR stories about Eastwind! This -IS- the same Eastwind as Airways Magazine profiled, right!!!??? The sweet, angelic, 'darling' of the 'industry' that they praised so highly??!! What has gone wrong with them? Is it true that they are mechanical-delay plagued, and that they almost always have a plane out of service? Are the awful stories true about the service, seats, and employees??

Well, my opinion of Eastwind is not a very positive one. I live in Rochester, NY one of the cities Eastwind used to stop at. They were here for all of six months I believe....they couldn't hack it. To make matters worse, even though they said they might stop service, they let ticket holders hold onto their tickets long enough to get screwed. The day they stopped taking two week advanced reservations out of Rochester wasn't until the DAY they stopped service. There were a lot of people that planned on flying those next two weeks, but they were hung out to dry.

Eastwind used to be great. Then they switched to the Sabre reservation system and that killed them. They also moved their reservation center, and had problems with that. According to an Eastwind F/O that I know here in GSO, they're really focusing on getting their act together - a few hundred calls to the Better Business Bureau tends to have that effect.

Just recently they pulled out of Tampa. Seems they're still "shopping" for the most profitable routes. Truth is that I would never book a flight with them more than two weeks in advance. Growing pains - but if they've lasted this far they have a great chance of survivng.

The reason they had a plane out of service for months is cos one of their (two) 737s had an uncommanded rudder movement which nearly threw the plane on it's back. The captain managed to keep the plane flying and they landed a few minutes later uneventfully at Richmond VA. The captain said he could see his knees shaking as they rolled out. So the subsequent grounding of the plane (these uncommanded rudder movements leave no trace, so the invesigation takes months and months) cost the airline dearly. That would explain the sudden drop in standards - they were getting one 737 for the price of two.

Yes, Cedarjet, but there is almost always one plane out of service due to mechanical problems now (this was after the uncommanded roll). You should have seen the Eastwind gate in BOS when they had a problem! Eastwind has the "TowerAir-Syndrome".

Yep. They have the TowerAir-Syndrome! They had a three hour mechanical delay, the agents told them, "we have a three hour delay", and then went on their breaks until about 15 mins. before the flight left. I'm surprised none of the passengers 'body slammed' an agent! (see the CO post)

Not too long ago on the news I heard that all of the passengers on a flight out from Greensboro did not want to get off the plane when an Eastwind manager told them to get off the plane(I have no idea why, but I bet the airline shut down temporarily.) It got ugly, and they had to call in the authorities to mandatorily remove the paxs from the plane. I believe one pax was arrested for resisting order from authorities.